The event, presented by Amy Lane, The Royal Opera's Head Staff Director, will give behind the scenes insights into Gaetano Donizetti’s opera through a series of interviews with members of the cast and creative team.

‘He was always searching for a reason to create a different canvas with each opera', says Pappano. 'Tosca sounds completely different from La bohème;La bohème sounds completely different from Manon Lescaut.'

Antonio Pappano on Il tabarro

Inspired by Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Puccini employed two distinct techniques in the first opera of his triptych, the first of these being repetition:

‘The idea of repeated bits of music, is akin to a groove in pop music or a riff in jazz music', says Pappano.

The second of these techniques is parallelism - the parallel movement of two or more chords. 'It is one of the most important devices Debussy created', says Pappano. The harmonic variation this creates is one of the ways in which the music depicts the 'seedy' dock-side setting of Il tabarro. Throughout the one-act opera, there's a sense of undulation, the feeling of water, there’s even sounds of a tugboat.'

Antonio Pappano on Suor Angelica

In Suor Angelica, Puccini builds the anticipation of seeing the lead characters through off-stage singing and bell-like melodies, a device regularly employed by the composer thoughout his works:

'It's almost a zen feel', said Pappano. 'You hear this voice from off-stage, from afar. You also hear [music like] bird-song using piccolo off-stage. It's such a tender and sweet atmosphere'.

For Pappano it is not simply the musical techniques that hypnotise the audience but Puccini’s ability to employ them around the stage and draw the audience in. 'Puccini was a fantastic theatre man', says the conductor.

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Italian baritone Leo Nucci gave an insight into Daniele Abbado's new production of Nabucco at a recent ROH Insights event.

Leo is singing the role of King Nabucco, a role he estimates he has performed around two hundred and fifty times at opera houses around the world. 'For me, Nabucco is something really special. I debuted in it when I was 51 years old. [The role] needs a man with experience of life.'

'When I was a little boy, my grandmother sang pieces from Nabucco every day'

Leo also spoke about the life of Giuseppe Verdi and his legacy: 'The mentality of Verdi is the mentality of humanity. Verdi never thought about himself, he thought about people; about humanity.'

Lighting designer Paule Constable recently revealed the world of lighting opera and theatre productions as part of an ROH Insights session.

'If you imagine when you're first making a show and a director is [working out] how they want to tell a story, they're obviously going to think very early on about the set and costume designer that they're going to work with,' Paule said. 'How that is seen, how it's perceived, how it's brought to life is what the lighting designer does.'

On working on this key aspect of production design, Paule said: 'There are infinite possibilities with light - it's very far from arbitrary. We consider every decision we make in a huge amount of detail.'

Paule also spoke about how she got into lighting design: 'I love the technical side of things, which for many [lighting designers] is our way in. I love climbing ladders and changing gels and playing with light but I also found I really loved what you can do with light in a theatre.'

Forgotten operatic gem Robert le diable will be staged for the first time at Covent Garden in 122 years this Season.

Although now a repertory rarity (over the past five years it was the 563rd most commonly staged work internationally according to Operabase), at the time of its premiere in Paris, Meyerbeer's opera was a great success.

"Meyerbeer has an extraordinarily eclectic musical language," Dr Hibberd told the audience, "Meyerbeer characterizes the two worlds of the demonic and the heavenly very carefully so the heavenly side associated with Alice is represented with celestial harps and high woodwind and contrastingly the world of Bertram is lots of low brass; trombones, ophicleides and bassoons as well - dark timbre instruments. You have these worlds juxtaposed."

Speaking about Eugène Scribe's dramatic and revolutionary libretto, which followed a style that the librettist had developed, Dr Hibberd said: "The characteristics of his librettos were that first of all you'd leap into the action mid-way through - there's no long, dull first act. Scribe also tended to put cliffhangers at the end of each act; the audience was propelled through the drama."

Now in his second Season in the post, Kasper Holten, Director of Opera has a challenge on his hands. Spurning a career in economics (his mother was the Governor of the Bank of Denmark and he proved particularly strong in the subject at school), he’s now got to walk the creative high wire at Covent Garden. How does The Royal Opera continue to mount exciting new productions in financially straitened times?

“I’m not a guy for revolution, it’s about evolution” he says of his aspirations for the company.

Kasper had a passion for opera from a young age, creating his own miniature productions with Lego (the building blocks of any Danish childhood). As he prepares for his Royal Opera debut as a stage director with Eugene Onegin, Kasper told the event audience: " I did my first production of Eugene Onegin in my Lego theatre!"

Graduating to a puppet theatre production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in adolescence, it was only a matter of time before he became Artistic Director at Royal Danish Opera.

Royal Ballet Soloists Melissa Hamilton and Eric Underwood were the subjects of a recent In Conversation event.

They spoke to fellow artist Gary Avis about their careers so far as well as plans for the future and what they're most excited about in the upcoming Season.

As well as recounting how she left the UK to train in Greece, Melissa spoke about debuting in Romeo and Juliet. On top of the challenge of the role itself, she had to change partners three days before opening night. "My debut was put together with my Romeo [Edward Watson] three days before...To do any MacMillan ballet you rely on your partner, that's what makes MacMillan MacMillan: it's about the relationship of the characters, but Ed was there for me 100%. When we did the balcony pas de deux in performance was the first time we had run it the whole way through!"

Both Eric and Melissa started ballet late and Eric told Gary about leaving his native Washington D.C. for the School of American Ballet in New York to train as a dancer: "Ballet was really clear for me - things were right and wrong. There was no grey area so it's easy to know what you're trying to achieve and I immediately fell in love with ballet. "

Ring Cycle Director Keith Warner was interviewed by Director of the Royal Opera Kasper Holten as part of a recent In Conversation event.

Keith spoke about his career, what inspired his production of Richard Wagner's masterwork and how he tackled such an ambitious project He also spoke about whether there is new hope at the end of the piece or whether it is entirely pessimistic.

"It's a massive artistic experience that we all have together. I think Wagner's real religion is art and theatre itself," Keith told Kasper. "He says, we who've experienced this take from it and we go out and change the world or change ourselves."

Royal Ballet Principal Federico Bonelli was recently the subject of an ROH Insights session.

Federico told interviewer Christopher Cook about being taught from an early age by Cuban teachers in his native Italy. "I used to know Carlos Acosta when I was a kid, he was a few years older than me. I used to look at him with my mouth open...I knew he was good, " he told the live audience.

The Italian Principal also spoke of competing in ballet competitions as a young dancer and early positions at Zurich Ballet and Dutch National Ballet before his move to The Royal Ballet in 2003. He also discussed the challenges of dancing wide repertory including works new to him by Frederick Ashton. Speaking about his first performance of The Sleeping Beauty and replacing Johan Kobborg mid-show, Federico said, "I told [Monica Mason] I had no shoes. She said 'Don't worry, I'll do something' and so, while I was doing some make-up, I remember Monica with my white shoes and a teabag dying my shoes. I put them on, did a couple of splits and went on and danced with Alina [Cojocaru]."

He also spoke of his thoughts about the tradition of narrative ballets.